So jokes aside, I’ve been doing some light research (read: Wikipedia) in getting ready to write this sucker. I want to know who influenced Martin and why, where he was involved and what events he found himself embroiled in. One of the biggies was the Priscillian Affair of 385, when the Church leaned on the state to do its dirty work of silencing heretics. In this case by killing them. Priscillian was the first person the Church appealed to Rome to have killed because we couldn’t have a decent conversation between Bishops. But that’s beside the point I hope to make in this particular blog post.

What is keeping me up at night for the time being is thinking about who mentored Martin and where he got some of his views (at least those he didn’t get while serving his 25 year Roman military obligation). Martin sought out Hilary of Poitiers as a mentor, who was considered the greatest theologian of the era. Hilary, like Martin, was raised by two pagan parents and went thru a conversion, eventually becoming a theological force to be reckoned with. He had some really concrete views on Constantine, the emperor who baptized the state and made Christianity a legal religion. Hilary thought Constantine was the anti-Christ…

Martin, on the other hand, didn’t feel the same way. He couldn’t have, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have remained in the Roman military for 20+ years after his baptism. But he seemed to think Hilary was pretty cool, since he continued to be mentored by him. Another early Church figure who wasn’t totally agro about Constantine was Ambrose, who mentored another church father we all know and love, Augustine.

Here is where it really gets interesting (and I will leave it here for tonight, maybe writing more about my thesis work in later blogs). Augustine is where the modern church turns for what we now call Just War theology/doctrine/tradition. I think this is a huge mistake. For one, Augustine never systematized a theory of when war was just. Instead, most of what we have of his writings directly on war were pastoral replies to high-ranking soldiers and government officials. Hardly a deliberate attempt at providing a framework through which to understand how war can be just. More importantly, the question of Priscillian should cause us pause. Augustine didn’t start his ministry until after the Church learned that it could have Caesar execute those it wanted silenced, and neither Ambrose nor Augustine seem to critically engage whether this is just (or theologically credible at all) to begin with.

In contrast, Hilary’s student Martin spoke out vehemently against the planned execution (as well as the heresy), even excommunicating the two bishops most active in appealing to Rome. It took Caesar himself to convince Martin to return to communion with these persecutors, a move that Martin went to his grave regretting, since Priscillian was executed nonetheless. Ambrose seemed to have remained silent about the affair, allowing the state to assert an authority over a Christian that had absolutely no historical precedent. Ambrose, who was a cradle Catholic, mentored Augustine (whose mother, Monica, was famously Christian), who similarly failed to critically challenge Caesar’s authority in the realm of violence (or at least did not do so strongly enough).

My thesis will be to look at Martin and how we have come to privilege a kind of ‘intellectual’ knowledge over that kind of knowledge we acquire through a lived experience. To understand war, we look to a thinker (Augustine), instead of a soldier (Martin), and that is a problem. To think that we can ‘know’ something primarily through abstracting it is horse manure. Certainly there is a kind of knowledge that comes by submitting a subject to intellectual scrutiny, but that knowledge is inherently limited to that which we can imagine apart from experience. For example, I might read about changing a diaper, but I won’t really know shit until I get my hands dirty. In relying too heavily on Augustine (Aquinas is another good example), we think we have ‘understood’ war and justice, but we have really only learned that which is possible exclusively through contemplation. But to really get down to brass tax, we have to get our hands dirty. We have to trust those who are practitioners at least as much as we do those who are theorists (if not more so). If we want to understand war, we should be looking toward Martin and the soldier saints long before we turn to Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Ramsey, or …Hauerwas.

In Catholicism, abstinence takes on a deeper meaning than my mainline, slightly evangelical Protestant background. Abstinence in the Roman church means abstaining from meat, not necessarily sex. Every Friday during the season of Lent, Catholics are expected to refrain from eating the meat of fellow mammals and also fowl. Ancient practices based this restraint on the fact that meat at one point bled, and abstinence is observed on Fridays in Lent as foreshadowing Good Friday. On Fridays, Catholics abstain from their moral proximity to shedding blood in anticipation for the One who bled once and for all, for us all.

Courtesy www.fatherbill.org

Another thing that compels me to consider the Roman Catholic church is the emphasis (some would say dependency) on tradition and liturgy. In particular, I am grateful for the formality with which the Catholic church honors saints throughout her history, especially those who served in the military (as I once did), and even more particularly, those who abstained from shedding blood. In fact, the majority of soldier saints from the first three centuries were martyred for refusing to shed blood (or worship the head of state). March 12^th marks the feast day of one such soldier saint, Maximilian of Tebessa. Saint Max would actually not like the title “soldier saint.” In fact, he was killed for refusing the title (well, not “saint,” but certainly “soldier”).

The year was 295, and young Max was compelled by law to enlist. Max’s father Victor had served, and Roman law dictated that the sons of veterans be conscripted. His father reluctantly took him to the local recruiting station, where they gave him the equivalent of a set of dog tags, which he refused to place around his neck, stating

It is not permitted to me to bear the lead upon my neck after [having received] the saving seal of my Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Maximilian found military service to be in violation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that violence and shedding blood was wrong. At just 21 years old, he was beheaded for refusing to enlist.

This year, in remembrance of Maximilian, I have decided to abstain from meat as a symbolic gesture to the pacifism he and I share – of abstaining from shedding the blood of our fellows (animal and enemy alike). Of course, Lent is supposed to be a time in which you give up something you actually find pleasurable, and I certainly did not find war pleasurable. I did love my time in the military though; the camaraderie, the sense of purpose, ‘roughing it’ in the field for training exercises, jumping out of airplanes in North Carolina, hiking through the tropical jungle in Hawaii…

But like Max, I found Christ calling me out of the world’s way of doing things, out of the cycle of supposedly redemptive violence. It was a difficult path, the one least traveled that leads to a narrow gate few will find. Those who that embark on that martial journey, like Max before us, face an uphill climb as part of a community that faces social distress (such as substance abuse, homelessness, and suicide) of epidemic proportions.

Christian soldiers wrestle constantly between their faith in God and their service to our country, often thrown about in the tumultuous waters of political sloganeering (what can “support” really mean when purchased for just $1.50 and slapped haphazardly on a million bumpers?). In churches and communities, loved ones remain reluctantly silent for fear of asking the wrong question or wandering into restricted moral territory. I still get asked if I have killed people, and the awkward silence the inquisitor is met with dwarfs the emotional toll already exacted internally by well-intentioned ignorance. But I refuse to let the silence win, no matter how painful reconciliation might be.

With a decade of war behind us, it is time to speak up and listen in to our war-torn warriors. We will make mistakes, but we shouldn’t let the challenge deter us – our love for those who’ve served must conquer our fear of slipping up. For pointers on where to start with the ones we care for who’ve been touched by combat, here are a few credible resources;

• http://sites.duke.edu/aftertheyellowribbon/media
• www.helpersunite.com/projects/76-centurion-s-guild
• http://conscienceinwar.org/about
• www.thesimpleway.org/index.php/store/product/jesus-bombs-ice-cream-dvd-resource-guide

Of course, Lent is a time to give up things we love, and nobody in their right mind loves war. But we so often choose silence when it comes time to speak; to our friends and family, to our government, to our enemies. Let’s abstain from silence the rest of this Lenten season, the rest of this year, the rest of our lives. Words can hurt, but they can also heal, and this generation of veterans deserves every bit of attentive care we can possibly afford.

**This is the fourth stop on the IVP Lenten blog tour, sharing posts every Monday this season. Leading the way was Margot Starbuck, Brent Bill, and Rachel Stone. Following me will be Andrew Byers, Valerie Hess, Beth Booram, and Chad Young. Stay in touch by following @IVPbooks or @IVpress on Twitter.

Right now, there are more soldiers falling on their own swords than there are falling to the sword.

Since at least 2005, 17 (yes, seventeen) veterans kill themselves each and every day. They are broken and in need of compassion, and what’s worse, they are standing behind you in line at Whole Foods, sitting next to you in Church on Sunday, and sharing notes with you in class. The data was collected by CBS in a report they aired in 2007, and Congress.org found that in 2009 & 2010, there were more suicides of active duty troops than there were combat fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan COMBINED!

Head over to http://help.st/3zy and consider contributing to the work of Centurion’s Guild.

Imagine you are a beautiful piece of fine China. You sit on the shelf with the other pieces; cups and plates, salad forks and butter knives. People admire you as they walk by. Life on the shelf is interrupted only briefly by special dinners for important guests. You are a part of a set, and all the pieces of China are all relied on for particular qualities you all share, you know what your place is, what specific quality you possess and therefor offer.

But then one day you are accidentally dropped, breaking into a thousand dangerously sharp shards. In the bustle, you are swept under the rug so the guests don’t have to see you. After dinner is over, you’re brought out from under the rug. Some of your smaller pieces can’t be found, but you get glued back together as carefully as possible. You bear visible scars, but you are also fundamentally weakened. Questions plague your mind; will the glue hold? can I still be stacked with the rest of the China? will I ever be admired again?

No matter how skilled the craftsman who put you back together, regardless of how much money was put into your repair, you know that you will never be the same as you once were. Do you want to be put back on the shelf at all, or do you just want to be put back on the floor? You care so much for the other pieces of China that you don’t particularly want to be put back on the shelf, you don’t want to sully the aesthetic uniformity. The trash can looks more appealing than the shelf; after all, you just wouldn’t fit in on the shelf you once called home…

Church is that place where we don’t hide our scars, where some are China but others handcrafted pottery. All have scars, so none are out of place. We are admired not for our perfection but because we are products of the Owner’s hand.

When people are deployed repeatedly and come home to awkward glances and uncomfortable silences, can we blame them for only wanting to return to combat instead of coming (all the way) home? It is not merely an addiction, it is a fundamental shift in identity – soldiers can feel the difference in their very souls. In these circumstances, we at home need not only to remind them that they are still valuable and “normal,” we also need to be honest about ways in which we are all scarred and shattered.

Confession must take on a whole new meaning, not just for those who have killed in combat, but those of us who instinctively think that they are not even indirectly a part of that violence. Heschel said that in a representative democracy, some are guilty but all are responsible. We all need to confess, we all need to acknowledge the collective nature of the responsibility for war we all share. We are all damaged goods, all touched by the horrors of war. If we can convey that reality, maybe then the rest of the broken plates and cups would feel more at home with us than they do in the shattering chaos of war.

In this icon, Martin is depicted in his military attire with a sword that has been broken by the power of the Cross. Fr. Bill commented that he had never before used so much gold leaf in writing an icon, a testimony to the richness of character we find in the life of Martin. As a part of the commissioning process, I was asked to write a short reflection on Martin’s life and significance, which you can find below. The complete prayer card can be found on Fr. Bill’s website; www.fatherbill.org.

   I wrote the following commentary for an icon that Fr. Bill McNichols did some time ago of the patron saint of soldiers and chaplains; Martin, Bishop of Tours. Martin was reluctantly acclaimed bishop of Tours (in France) on July 4th, 370 CE. The townsfolk had led him into the city under the auspices of needing to have a sick man healed. When he reached the town center, the peasants proclaimed loudly and in one accord that he would be their bishop. Some other religious were present and muttered their doubts, but were scolded so harshly by the people that they raised no further objections.

Fr. Bill, accomplished iconographer in the Roman Catholic Church, asked me to write a short reflection on Martin so that he could transform the beautiful icon to the left into a prayer card for Christians hoping to learn more about this inspiring man of God. Below you can read what he and I came up with. You can order cards on his website; www.fatherbill.org.

I have been asked to lead a time of prayer in a couple of weeks during Sunday worship in which we will pray over a young man who has joined the Air Force and shipping off to basic and eventually his assignment. I have agreed to lead the time of prayer, but I’m wondering how I go about praying for him with me being a Christian pacifist. Any suggestions? I have spent significant time thinking about, practicing, and experiencing ways this has happened.  So I very much value your opinion on this.  I’m open to hearing anything, even, “what’s the big deal, of course you pray for him.”

I think that it would be a mistake to focus on the bad aspects of the military, though there are many. But there are some things that do build up and strengthen those who join the military, especially boot camp. It can give people confidence, teaches them camaraderie, and fulfills their desire to be a part of something bigger than self. It takes courage, especially in a time of war, to enlist. These things are all things we can be thankful for and acknowledge (if you like) in praying for him in church.

I also know that we sometimes want to qualify our support and make it known in some way that we have some reservations about military service, but I don’t know if a prayer is the place for this. Instead, maybe pray that he be led to always do the right thing, no matter how hard it might be. Ask that God continue to strengthen him in his moral discernment, to always follow his conscience and (if yours is a “high church” tradition) the teachings and doctrines of faith.

Finally, i think it is important to ‘mark’ the person that he is before he is trained to do violence. You and I might agree that what he is about to do might compromise his moral or spiritual integrity. Having a moment naming him as wholly (and holy) one person now might give him something to return to if and when he encounters things that challenge the moral framework I hope your church has constructed for him to rely on. Problem is, i don’t know how this might be accomplished. This is not something that he needs to be aware of himself, but something referencing the person he is within his family (father, brother, son, etc.?) could serve this purpose. Did he always take his kids to baseball games? Was he always doing his chores for his parents? Did he and his siblings have anything particularly unique they did together? I think he might need that sensory memory in case he does something later that makes him feel less whole (and holy); something to return to, however mundane. i.e., even if he has to kill in war, he can return to wholeness by sharing baseball games with friends, or that thing he does with siblings, etc.

Most importantly, keep it brief, don’t make it a big deal. He is doing something important, but not incredibly more important than, say harvesting our food or educating our children. All vocations deserve respect, but none more than necessary. We venerate our service members too much sometimes, and that can have disastrous consequences. The longer he is the center of attention, the more this can become ingrained in our conscience. Keep our prayers short and our confessions long, if you ask me (or mewithoutYou, the band that I stole that line from).

~

Every year on the 11th of November, the United States celebrates Veterans Day, a day we memorialize those who served our country in the Armed Forces. CBS did a study in 2007 which found that in 2005, an average of 17 veterans killed themselves every single day. As for active duty service members, in 2009 and 2010, there were more suicides than there were combat fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan combined (the data for 2011 is not yet released). In the midst of the most prolonged conflict our nation has ever undertaken, it would seem that care and concern for our veterans would be absolutely central to our public discourse, in both the political realm and the ecumenical realm.

West Point ethicist Lt. Col. Pete Kilner has said that training our sons and daughters to sacrifice their normal reluctance to killing carries with it the obligation to help soldiers cope. Our national and religious leaders are obligated to turn their attention to the social plight of soldiers and veterans. This obligation does not recede during an election year; our pastors and presidents will always have a responsibility to turn their eyes toward the people that Jesus himself prayed forgiveness for on the Cross. Our concern is not to emerge solely from the honor owed them for their service—it is a theological imperative.

Combat veterans not only have been falling on their own swords more frequently than have been falling to the sword—they have also failed to return their swords fully to their sheaths. Two recent news stories illustrate the urgency of turning our attention toward the mental and spiritual health of those who conduct violence in our name. In one, on New Years Day, a park ranger was killed after attempting to enforce a vehicle checkpoint at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. Shortly thereafter, a serial killer stabbed four homeless men near my own home of record in Orange Country, California. In each story, the perpetrators were Iraq War veterans.

“NO MORE CAN WE SIMPLY FAIL TO SEE THE DEEP NEED OF THOSE RIGHT THERE IN THE PEWS NEXT TO US OR SITTING BESIDE US IN CLASS OR AT WORK.”

Stories like these are becoming startlingly common, and they point to the extreme urgency to take our care for our nations service members much more seriously. Service members make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, so it doesn’t surprise me when I learn that war and military service don’t make it onto the radar of our presidential candidates or religious leaders. But the Church is called to have a special concern for the least of those among us. We must not remain silent, no more can we simply fail to see the deep need of those right there in the pews next to us or sitting beside us in class or at work.

In the first week of November last year, Richard Land of The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and Jim Wallis of Sojourners did a series of interviews speculating together about what issues would be prioritized in the evangelical world; immigration, the economy, care for creation, energy independence, world hunger, even gay rights and abortion made their list. Evangelicals will have a lot on their plate this year.

Disappointingly, nowhere in their discussions did the matter of our veterans returning from war find voice. In the shadow of Veterans Day, in our eleventh year at war, two prominent evangelicals, representing both ends of the political spectrum, were silent about the human cost of war. Their omission was a dangerous oversight.

We must always remind those in elected (and ecclesial) office that past and present military personnel not only deserve our attention, it is something they desperately need. This year Veterans Day falls on a Sunday, less than a week after Election Day—a great reminder that the plight of our military personnel existed well before the elections and will continue well past them.

I discovered, through work I do for Centurion’s Guild, that before being known as Veterans Day, Nov. 11 was Armistice Day—a day of mourning the fact that WWI failed to be “The War to End All Wars.” But even before that, it was the feast day for the patron saint of soldiers and chaplains, Martin of Tours. Martin served nearly 25 years in the Roman military and saw how government worked, having worked closely with Caesar Julian in the Praetorian Guard. In the end, he laid down his sword and became a priest, convinced that the best way to inaugurate change is not just through the political process, but with proactive Christian charity. This year, don’t let the immediacy of the election cycle drown out the urgency of the few, the pained, these war-torn warriors.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,400 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.